The Massachusetts Department of Public Health launched a cancer study in 2021 looking at incidents of cancer in five Berkshire County communities.
Last May DPH said it would take at least six months or longer to complete the study. The department now says it will be released sometime in 2024.
The study was requested by City Council members in Pittsfield, where a now-closed General Electric plant on the Housatonic River used PCBs to manufacture electrical transformers from the 1930s into the 1970s.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says PCBs are "probable human carcinogens."
Jane Winn, executive director of the Berkshire Environmental Action Team, said she is concerned the study hasn't come out yet.
"I'm just curious to see what elevated cancer rates there might be, in the Berkshires specifically, that might relate to PCBs. So [in] Pittsfield, especially in those census tracts that are near the old GE site, and then going down the river as well," she said.
The study is using the Massachusetts Cancer Registry to evaluate the pattern of 10 types of cancers over a 25-year period. It will also study bladder cancer in Pittsfield, which has two PCB disposal sites. One abuts the Allendale Elementary School playground.
A third PCB disposal site is planned in Lee as part of the EPA cleanup of another 10 miles of the river, from Pittsfield to Great Barrington.
